President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with several Union ministers, paid floral tributes on Sunday at the statue of tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda at Prerna Sthal in the Parliament House Complex, on his 151st birth anniversary. Since 2021, November 15 has been observed as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas to honour tribal freedom fighters.

Source: 7Globe / Times of India report

The ceremony turned political after BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari alleged on X that Congress leaders, including Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, had skipped the Parliament tribute. Bhandari wrote, as an allegation by the BJP: "Rahul Gandhi & Congress hates tribal heroes!" and "Rahul Gandhi & entire Gandhi Vadra family skipped paying tribute to Bhagwan Birsa Munda at Parliament!" He concluded: "Congress is anti tribal!"

Bhandari also targeted Gandhi for attending the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad, organised by the Congress-led Telangana government, asking whether the Congress leader had time for a summit but no time to pay respect to Birsa Munda. He also revived a 2025 remark attributed to Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi about President Murmu, made after the President's address to a joint sitting of Parliament, NationPress reported.

Gandhi did, however, mark the day publicly in his own post. In a tribute posted on Sunday, the Congress leader saluted Birsa Munda as a great revolutionary and said Munda's courage, sacrifice and self-respect in defending Adivasi rights over jal, jungle, zameen — water, forests and land — would continue to inspire, NationPress reported in a separate report.

India Today reported that Congress had yet to respond to the BJP's latest allegations about the Parliament ceremony. The BJP's charge, as made by its spokesperson, concerns absence from the Parliament House ceremony specifically; it is presented here as the BJP's allegation, not as an established fact about the Congress leaders' observance of the day.